In the spirit of being back at school, let’s have a true-false quiz on electric school buses (ESB’s). Or no, for more fun, I’ll give you the answers in advance. The following are false, and I’ll explain why.
It’s mostly just California, with all its fancy money, running ESB’s. While our neighbor does have lots of fancy money, and the majority of ESB’s now on the road, the biggest commitment to electric school buses, by far, came last week out of Virginia.
Dominion Energy has voiced plans to help Virginia school districts buy up to 1,050 ESB’s (incremental costs plus charging infrastructure). With only about 90 ESB’s currently in the U.S., the surge in production this will trigger may help drive prices down. And Dominion’s plan, which a number of utilities share, of using ESB batteries mid-day for vehicle to grid purposes, is a great topic for a future newsletter.
Funding costly electric school buses means cutting teachers’ jobs. In contrast, funding often comes from non-education sources like electric utilities, as above. The two ESB’s in Washington state were funded by a coal company grant. A number of states are using Volkwagen settlement funding for ESB’s. Portland General Electric has set aside $2 million in Clean Fuel Program funds for electric school buses and charging infrastructure.
Electric co-ops in Minnesota funded two ESB’s. Let’s note that fuel dollars paid to locally owned utilities like co-ops support the local (often rural) economy, while diesel fuel purchases do not. And none of these funding sources compete with teachers’ salaries, or any other educational need.
The operators and mechanics are used to diesel buses; they don’t want electric school buses. The first statement is true, but Bill Bradley disputed the second statement when I interviewed him last month. Bill is a board member of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 757, which represents 5,500 bus operators and mechanics in Oregon.
Bill noted that, as with many new technologies, nobody went to school to learn how to drive or work on electric buses. He said training is definitely needed. At the same time, “we’d be left behind, we’d be the horse and carriage if we continued to hitch ourselves to diesel. I want ATU members to be competitive, the best around. We have to embrace the change to electric. It would never work to resist it.”
We can start running electric school buses in Oregon whenever we want. Not true — yet. Unlike the many states running at least a few ESB’s, Oregon statute currently disallows them, due to decades-old requirements like hydraulic brakes (ESB’s have regenerative brakes). Brock Dittus at the Oregon Department of Education says the state plans to address this. The rule-changing process will involve stakeholder input from school districts, parents, etc.
Best to wait until funding is available. Then we’ll learn about ESB’s. You could do that. But then you won’t be ready or competitive for the funding when it does become available, because you won’t have prepared a business case that projects your fuel and maintenance savings, or shows the benefits to students’ health. You won’t have engaged the stakeholders from whom you need letters of support, or developed the crucial relationship with your utility, who is becoming your new fuel vendor.
Now is a great time to learn about ESB’s and prepare to eventually get your first ones. (That is a true statement). My job, still pro bono at this point, is to help you do that. I’m currently in meetings and dialogues with three Oregon school districts on how they can prepare to get their first electric school buses. If you’d also like to start a conversation, let’s get in touch!
Happy autumn!
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.Whose land are you on?